/*
 * Copyright 2001-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package com.sharp.framework.utils.codec;

/**
 * <p>
 * Provides the highest level of abstraction for Encoders. This is the sister
 * interface of {@link Decoder}. Every implementation of Encoder provides this
 * common generic interface whic allows a user to pass a generic Object to any
 * Encoder implementation in the codec package.
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Apache Software Foundation
 * @version $Id: Encoder.java,v 1.10 2004/02/29 04:08:31 tobrien Exp $
 */
public interface Encoder {

    /**
     * Encodes an "Object" and returns the encoded content as an Object. The
     * Objects here may just be <code>byte[]</code> or <code>String</code>s
     * depending on the implementation used.
     *
     * @param pObject
     *            An object ot encode
     *
     * @return An "encoded" Object
     *
     * @throws EncoderException
     *             an encoder exception is thrown if the encoder experiences a
     *             failure condition during the encoding process.
     */
    Object encode(Object pObject) throws EncoderException;
}
